


sometimes i'm

by fated_addiction



Series: let's talk about the weather [1]
Category: K-pop, Real Person Fiction, Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Angst, Eventual Romance, F/F, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25434352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/pseuds/fated_addiction
Summary: Dinner is Irene’s idea. "It’s been awhile,” she says too.Wendy, on cleaning up a mess. It's time to address the elephant in the room.
Relationships: Bae Joohyun | Irene/Son Seungwan | Wendy
Series: let's talk about the weather [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1843702
Comments: 5
Kudos: 105





	sometimes i'm

-

dinner is irene’s idea.

“it’s been awhile,” she says too. and there’s some serious regret.

wendy wonders if it’s just pity. then stops herself. they sit in a small restaurant near the apartment, sharing an appetizer. it's too late to be hungry; irene is really just a pile of nerves from promoting. wendy might just be restless.

“seems kind of weird to say,” wendy still responds too. because it is – what else can she say, really. “you saw me at home last night?”

“you know what i mean. we used to do this a lot more.”

“oh.”

it's no secret that wendy is struggling. it's a little bit shameful, given how she goes between resenting the girls and not. she’s had to do a lot of this alone; life goes on, you know. she can’t hide from that. it just doesn’t make this any easier. Especially when she misses them, even across the room.

she looks away, uncomfortable. doesn't have anything passive or something witty to say to fill the awkward silence. takes her fork instead. stabs it right into the mozzarella concoction they’re attempting to share.

irene doesn’t go first though. wendy sighs.

“seems like this more important than you’re letting on,” she finally says. gathers her together and watches irene tense up in surprise. she almost smiles. too obvious. “what do you want to talk about?”

irene bites her lip. doesn’t blush. she’s not blusher. instead she usually just awkwardly laughs through the mess of feelings. wendy can sort of gage where this is going. holds herself to being thoughtful and slow. it's not nice to assume, she scolds herself.

“i just –” irene sighs.

here, the world stops. maybe wendy feels a little dramatic. Her ears are ringing and she watches irene set herself back, look at her right in the eye as if to punctuate a point. she’s uncertain but it’s also as if she’s piecing together some kind of resolve.

“i think i like seulgi,” she says.

this is where wendy steps back –

since the beginning, it’s been irene and seulgi, their chemisty, and everything in between. joy usually sticks to greeting it disparagingly, “since the dawn of time! why not just get it out of your system?” and there’s a lot in that because no one tells a group of five girls that feelings are complicated.

dinner did end on a whimper though. she's pretty sure she told irene to just go and get through it, like everything else they do, just go and do it and luckily enough, they’re entering promotions where they spend every waking moment together. so it was coming, now or later.

“you okay?”

yeri finds her in the studio, post-recording. her makeup is still set perfectly into place. she's supposed to go home to her family tonight.

“i'm fine.” wendy blinks. she remembers the song notes in front of her. to get back into the habit, the company is telling her these days. “why?”

“joy told me that seulgi and irene may or may not have a thing that’s a real thing. or whatever she said. i think she’s pissed and given that you look like someone took a puppy away from you, i think you’re pissed too.”

“i'm not pissed.”

“no,” yeri agrees. “joy is pissed. you're –”

“busy,” she says dryly. “trying to get through this and remember how to record a song again. weird, right?”

yeri shakes her head. “you guys really need to get it together.”

she even pats wendy gently on the shoulder. says something about not singing too many overdone love songs. wendy thinks she laughs but doesn’t really hear her.

when she is left alone, she is left alone to her thoughts. it's weighs on her. that’s the truth. there's no confusion as to why either. 

what she can never run away from is that she’s always had feelings for irene, never not thought of herself as not having feelings for irene, and hasn’t struggled through them. the hard part is that they’re there and she knows they’re there, that she’s always told herself that she can have them but they’re best at a distance because she’s never seen herself within the radius of irene. she wasn’t there first.

the thing is – and there _is_ a thing – she didn’t wake up one day and tell herself, today’s the day, here i am and in love with irene. it was gradual, painful always, full of small touches and reassurances. it ambushed her. and she goes from thinking about irene to wondering why life doesn’t make sense without irene and how terrifying that feels to her, almost to the point where it’s too much. that’s why she can sing the hell out of love songs. 

there's a knock.

wendy startles herself out of her thoughts. irene is standing between the door, hand on the recording glass.

“hey,” she greets. “going home?”

“no, not for awhile. i'm meeting a producer for some practice.”

“that’s good.” and irene is really awkward. “i just have some time to kill and wanted to check in on you.”

wendy sees it written onto her face: dinner is a regret. good, part of her thinks. good. then she feels really selfish.

“i'm fine,” she says gently. turns away, pretending to read her song notes. she must really hate herself right now. “i promise if i needed anyone, i would call. yeri already checked in on me. i saw sooyoung twice this morning.”

“oh. okay.”

“what’s wrong?”

“sorry –” irene’s face opens into guilt. “i just feel like i sprung a lot on you the other night and really, i should have been checking in.”

the anger literally comes out of nowhere. wendy writes herself away from the music and into her own feelings, glaring at irene with some kind of pent of rage that she didn’t even know she had.

“i’m not going to break,” she half-hisses. leans back into her chair and turns to face irene head on. really, she stops thinking at this point. “and honestly? i don’t care. i don’t care that you think you’ve got feelings for seulgi and that’s a struggle for you because seulgi is super charismatic and has a lot of really good girls that are swimming around her. maybe that’s your own insecurities ramming through and maybe you should go and _tell_ her instead of me because it’s really messing me up inside and i don’t know what else to say to you.”

this is what they call regret.

wendy feels her ears start to ring and suddenly, the studio feels impossibly small. irene is staring at her too. wendy pushes herself back and stands abruptly. her body makes this weird, unnatural crack and you’ve been sitting too long, she yells at herself. mostly because she doesn’t want to think about anything else. she grabs her papers together too quickly, shoving them into her hands and making a note to text the producer oppa that she was supposed to meet that she’ll be back, she needs some air because she’s done something really stupid.

she can’t even apologize and leaves the room.

the kicker? irene never stops her either.

home is not a safe space.

it's late when she gets back. remembers that she texted joy and something like _i'm fine let’s commiserate with breakfast in the morning_ only to get a thumbs up back because at least someone gets her. the apartment is still dark and that’s something she’s entirely too thankful for, as she kicks off her shoes, neatly piling them in the cabinet with the others.

wendy forces herself to breathe first. she doesn’t deal with anger well. Especially when it’s self-imposed.

“you’re home.”

wendy jumps. “yah!” she doesn’t yell but she’s breathless and irene is right there, leaning against the wall, watching her with an unreadable expression. “maybe announce yourself next time?”

“i've been waiting up.”

“okay?”

irene steps into the hallway, over the steps next to their shoe cabinet. for that moment, she does tower over her. her mouth flattens and she looks angry, wearing it with weight on her shoulders.

“i'm not going to pretend to understand why you’re upset with me,” she says quietly. “i want to, but i owe you more than that.”

wendy feels a little bitter. “i could say way too much to that.”

“you’ve been different since dinner.”

“i'm tired and i'm trying to get used to longer days again.”

“you’re an awful liar, seung-wan-ah,” irene replies, punctuating every part of her name. her voice is low and heavy. “we both, at least, know that.”

wendy can’t say anything back to that.

instead, she just stands there. tries and thinks of some kind of excuse that she could use to get out of this. i listened to your song. i get it. i want your kind of chemistry. it's just harrowing path to throw herself down and she doesn’t know if she’s even ready to make that jump.

it's complicated and then irene drops both of her hands on wendy’s shoulders.

“look at me.”

“you don’t want to do that,” wendy warns. her heart starts to race as she feels irene’s fingers dig deeper into her shoulders. as if to hold onto her in place. 

“why?” irene’s voice drops a little. it's almost husky. it also pitches unevenly. “we don’t fight, you and me.”

wendy shakes her head. “no,” she agrees. “we don’t. but it doesn’t mean that i'm not going to do something stupid.”

if she were a better person, she would step back and say goodnight. gently pry irene’s hands off her shoulder and push herself back. if she were a better person, it would be easier to move forward from this little slip up.

but she can’t.

without thinking, she steps right into irene’s space. so much so, irene takes a step back and leans into the shoe cabinet, her mouth parting with some kind of sigh. wendy's body just takes the cue and slides her mouth right over irene’s. this is definitely her something stupid.

it feels just as manic as her restlessness. irene's mouth almost fits into replying back, half-teeth and a moan jerking forward as they dive right into a full-fledged make out. wendy’s ears are ringing with white noise and her hand dips over irene’s hip, threading her fingers through some kind of loop in her t-shirt. it’s weird and it’s heavy and none of it makes sense but they’re kissing each other and they can’t seem to stop.

wendy drags her mouth away from irene’s, then drags it back only to stop some kind of response and dips her tongue right in between her lips, lapping away at whatever coffee she just had. there's something so completely satisfying about the bitter taste and she feels a little greedy, her fingers connecting with skin and irene pressing her hips back into hers.

her confession? it's just messy. and now, it’s no longer her problem either.

to make a point, wendy pulls back first too. feels the weight of irene’s mouth lift and linger like a ghost. knows she’s watching her, still with that same look, the one that she couldn’t read before. she could say something. she _should_ say something. but it seems like everything that’s been said was already here and moved on without the two of them.

“good luck tomorrow.” wendy finds her voice and it cracks. she steps around irene, digging her hands into the pockets of the jacket she’s still wearing. “i'll make some time to watch the video,” she says.

irene doesn’t answer.

they both know she’s watched it already.

joy always keeps a promise. they buy breakfast together and share a coffee by the river. maybe they could call it commiserating.

they don’t talk about anything. not just yet. 

instead they try and buy an air fryer for the apartment. plan a noraebang date because wendy, according to joy, needs to go to a place where she can sing and it not feel like it’s something she has to do instead of something she loves to do. something about that hits wendy really hard, hard enough that her throat burns and maybe, maybe if she wanted to, she’d actually cry about it too. but this is breakfast with joy and time that she needed.

neither of them talk about the beautiful day either. how bright the sky is or how people are mostly keeping to themselves, so much so that wendy almost feels like shopping. on the way to the company though, she and joy pass a poster advertising seulgi and irene’s new song. neither of them stop to look; music is blaring out of the store and there’s a group of students watching the video on the screen, way too delighted to notice anything else.

joy doesn’t mean to declare it for the both of them. “it was bound to happen,” she says.


End file.
